MAD GRAD DAD

Manic E4: Idea #79 “Zephyr Dragons!”

Posted on August 29, 2021     Leave a Comment

During my 4th manic episode I had an idea, #79, of creating a fun, table-top card game to help kids (and/or parents) learn and memorize their times tables and practice other math skills. For now, I’m using the working title of “Zephyr Dragons!”

For the game’s math-skill underpinnings, my original idea was to make the numbers in it very big, like by using a 20×20 times table in the game. But I think that was just the mania hype of the idea. As I developed the gameplay, and as my mania faded, I scaled the idea down to just a 4×4 grid. A much more realistic place to start. Once I work out and test the gameplay mechanics, and if it is fun enough to play, I can scale the numbers later.

The bones of the game are pretty well thought out, but I would need to run a good number of iterations of the game to really see where my blind spots and friction points are. Maybe I could rope my nephews and other in-laws into playing it with me…? Then I could see if the game was actually fun, or if it was just fun in my head… It wouldn’t surprise me if the latter was true : D

…So anyway, here are the materials I wrote for the game. There are many key words and terms involved, so I would probably need to include some kind of glossary, but it all makes perfect sense when you play a couple of rounds of the game.

Background and Objective:

Chaos!!! Mayhem!!! The Emperor’s Clutch of Imperial Zephyr Dragons have broken their binding seals and wreak havoc across the land! Only the greatest Seers of the Empire can summon them to the Arena and pit their own Zephyr Dragon Clutches against them. By scrying from their Astral Orbs, the Seers may weave powerful Mystic Incantations to augment the power of their Dragons and Bind the Imperial Dragons once again. The Emperor offers a prize of the Elixir of Life for whomever can Bind the most Imperial Zephyr Dragons and restore the balance and harmony of the Empire. There’s no time to lose!!!

Setup and Materials:

Materials include:
1x 16-card objective deck: Imperial Clutch
2x 4-sided dice: Zephyr Shard and Dragon Bone
4x 16-card player decks: Seer’s Clutches
4x 4-card spell decks: Astral Orbs filled with Mystic Incantations

Each Seer gets a 1x Clutch of 16 Zephyr Dragons and 1x Astral Orb with 3x Mystic Incantations (4, if Advanced).

The quietest and most serene Seer starts the game by Invoking the Zephyr Shard and the Dragon Bone to Summon the first Imperial to the Arena.

Turns:

On their turn each Seer may choose to,
a) Dispatch a Dragon to fight the Imperial
b) Attempt to write a Mystic Incantation by sacrificing a Dragon
c) Burn an Incantation to Call a Dragon back from their Tower

Dispatch (1): The Seer with the strongest Dragon Binds the Imperial. Ties go to the latest Seer to play. Once Dispatched, the Dragon waits at the Seer’s Tower.

Dispatch (2): If a Seer has two Dragons and a Mystic Incantation, they may use them together to augment their power. If an augmentation results in a number less than 1, it is considered to have strength 1.

Sacrifice: The Seer with the weakest Dragon scries an Incantation from their Astral Orb . Ties go to the first Seer to Sacrifice.

Burn: An Incantation is expended and returns to the Astral Orb, in order to recover a Dragon from the Seer’s Tower.

Optional Rules:

Veils: Any player may play their Dragons or Incantations face down (the Color would still be visible, but the Strength would be veiled)

Include the Split Incantation: Only Integer division is allowed

Bound Imperials: If a Seer has any Bound Imperials they may be Dispatched once. Imperials are stronger than any other Dragons (unless Blocked with a Combo). Only one Imperial can be played against the summoned Imperial.
Also, if a Seer has a Bound Imperial that is summoned at the beginning of another turn, it is removed from the Seer’s Clutch, and may no longer be Dispatched.

Block: If playing with more than 2 players, two Seers may combine the power of their Dispatched Dragons. Each Seer sacrifices any two Dragons and one Incantation to nullify the Imperial.

Cards

Thanks for staying with me all the way down here!

In all reality, I probably won’t do anything with this for a long time, if ever… but who knows!? Maybe I should start a kickstarter for it! Tabletop games are king these days!

That’s all for now.

See you next week!

untitled portrait

Posted on August 25, 2021     Leave a Comment

https://mintable.app/art/item/untitled-reddit-gets-drawn/H3u1SLguKGvtcP1

untitled portrait

Posted on August 25, 2021     Leave a Comment

https://mintable.app/art/item/untitled-reddit-gets-drawn/WTPZTzWP6uyBLGT

My Brother’s Haiku: Low Brow #8

Posted on August 25, 2021     Leave a Comment

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hair like the ocean
Michael Wallick needs a cut
of veal parmesan

Written by Michael Wallick. Images rendered by big sleep AI. Curated by Mad Grad Dad.

CA$H MONEY

Posted on August 24, 2021     Leave a Comment

https://mintable.app/art/item/untitled-reddit-gets-drawn/mnlRh5fZmbrgzfT

Destroy Your Zodiac

Posted on August 23, 2021     Leave a Comment

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Rendered by Big Sleep AI. Curated by Mad Grad Dad.

https://mintable.app/Art/item/Destroy-Your-Zodiac-Let-these-speak-to-you/M6yMhwg-Kb6GlgV

Manic Episode 4: Idea #43

Posted on August 22, 2021     Leave a Comment

Well, I’m happy to say that I am feeling much better this week. No depressive symptoms. It seems like the lower step of olanzapine, at 2.5mg, is serving me well. Not sure when I will take the step off of it completely, but if I can be as functional as I have been this week, while still on 2.5mg, I feel no rush to do so.

This week, let’s go back into my database of thoughts from my fourth manic episode. Here is #43:

“The Upside Down World: Is there a slower, less efficient way of doing this? For manic times, it helps to have tasks that are slow and long. The experience of time dilation when I am manic makes 10 minutes feel like an hour, so it feels like you have more time to fill, which is exhausting. I find that it is helpful to have things that chew up lots of time.. like taking each piece of laundry directly to where it goes piece by piece… “

This is something I tried out during my last manic episode, and it is definitely an idea to keep. When I choose to keep certain thoughts and ideas for the future, it is because they serve a very important purpose: They can help solve the difficult problems that I will face in future manic episodes. Some ideas can help me in my everyday non-manic life too!

Being manic comes with a very alternative set of cognitive problems that I don’t experience in my stable periods (“normal periods?”… as if there is such a thing). I have found that my alternative problems require alternative solutions. Here’s a list of five specific problems that I face when I am manic, and then I will explain how and why idea #43 helps me solve them. Here are some of my challenges:

1. Inability to keep up with household tasks – Laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc.. These things become impossible for me when I am manic. This overarching problem is really a symptom caused by combinations of the next four problems.

2. Inability to focus on tasks made up of many subtasks – Let’s use my example about folding and putting away laundry as I mentioned above. When I am manic I see the world differently, everything around me screams out for my attention and I feel totally overwhelmed by everyday items that I would usually be able to ignore. Also, things that I normally see as a group, like a hamper of laundry or a dishwasher full of dishes, become daunting collections of individual things that must be attended to. IMMEDIATELY! So the laundry hamper is not a laundry hamper, instead I see a gang of 100 little jobs to do that all need to urgently be done at the same time. Clearly an impossible task! As such, it stresses me out like… well, crazy.

3. Restlessness – I literally (literally literally, not ‘literally’ literally) cannot stop moving. If I am not walking around, I cannot help but sway in place. If I am sitting down, I am tapping my fingers and feet or rocking in my chair. If I am lying down, my legs are rolling around and my hands and feet are drumming the floor.

4. Racing thoughts – This is the basis for this whole blog project about my ideas. I have too many scattered ideas crowding the finite space in my skull, and I need to get them out by writing them down or by telling someone, immediately.

5. Time dilation – Each hour feels like 10 hours. When I am manic, my mind is running at about 100x the rpms that it normally does. So, whenever I look at the clock, I am always shocked at how little time has passed. In my third and fourth manic episodes, I took a high nightly dosage of olanzapine to help me settle down at the end of the day. It helps my mind slow down enough for me to get the sleep that I desperately need. I was on a high enough dosage at the beginning of the episodes that when the drug took effect it was like I got run over by a bus. I could expect that about 90 minutes after taking the dose I would get barreled over and be able to sleep. At the end of the long-long-long feeling days of mania I feel ‘wired but tired’, and I very much welcome the olanzapine bus to knock me out. But the time dilation makes the 90 minute wait feels HOURS long.

Now that you understand some of the general problems I have, let’s talk about how idea #43, doing things as slowly and inefficiently as possible, helps me solve these problems. We’ll keep talking about laundry. Here is how I normally (non-manic) do it. 1) Separate the whole hamper into stacks by who lives in what room 2) Separate the room stacks by what goes in which drawer 3) Take the separated drawer stacks to their respective rooms 4) Put the stacks into their respective drawers 5) Distribute the miscellaneous items (towels, sheets, rags, etc.) around the rest of the house. For one hamper of ~50 items, this maybe takes five or ten minutes. Done.

This kind of orderly method is literally (same as above) impossible when I am manic, there are too many distractions. I simply cannot focus long enough to separate by room/person, then drawers, then go to another room and expect to remember that I was working on the WHOLE hamper.

Instead, when applying idea #43, here is how I (sometimes) managed to put away a whole load of laundry as slowly and inefficiently as possible. 1) Grab the topmost item in the hamper 2) Delicately fold it to ceremonial precision 3) Walk to the room that it goes in and put it in it’s respective drawer 4) Walk back to the hamper 5) Grab the topmost item… etc.. This alternative process helps me out with my aforementioned list of general problems in these ways (We’ll go in reverse order, just because):

5. Time dilation – this is pretty straightforward. It is much easier to fill the slow-moving time if each task takes much longer than it normally does. In my example of a ~50 item hamper, if I am taking 30 seconds on each item, then a 5 minute task takes 25 minutes. Time well burnt!

4. Racing thoughts – If I am focusing one ONE tangible item in my hand, like a piece of clean laundry, I am able to block out my thoughts as I attend to that ONE item. My thoughts will distract me from dealing with the WHOLE hamper, but if I am focusing on just ONE item, I can manage to temporarily stifle them. Also, I can be listening to music or wearing Icy Hot, which helps me tone down my internal cognitive noise.

3. Restlessness – I cannot sit or stand still as I separate and fold clothing. But walking from room to room 50 times helps my jitters. By inefficiently duplicating the subtask of walking into a different room for each item of clothing, I am able to take 50 short trips around the house, which eats up time and gives my body more physical work to do too. Extra steps well taken!

2. Inability to focus on tasks made up of many subtasks – I can’t fold and put away a hamper of laundry. But give me one piece of laundry, and I’m able to fold that and put it away. If I am able to ignore the full hamper, and focus on just one piece, I will eventually hit the bottom of the hamper at some point before nightfall… which leads us back to…

1. Inability to keep up with household tasks – And just like that, an oppressive full hamper of laundry was successfully folded and put away by a maniac. An alternative solution to an alternative problem.

#43 is a keeper, and can be applied to other such tasks like washing and putting away 50 dishes or sorting Legos.

See you next week!